Britain is in a hole. Does anyone truly believe that the Tories should keep on digging?
News that France may be starting to pull away from the UK, with more billionaires and millionaires and more successful international businesses, should surprise no one. The French are far from unique. Germany, though currently ailing, has enough economic muscle to keep it going for decades into the future, as do Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Austria. Even Romania – once derided as a gypsy haven – is catching up. The only good news is that, for the moment at least, we still leave Bulgaria in the dust.
Ireland – the poorest country in Europe in 1970 – has just released eight billion euros (£6.85 billion) from its swollen sovereign wealth fund to tackle the country’s chronic housing shortage. It has so much money that, like the old woman who lived in a shoe, it doesn’t know what to do.
All of the above EU member states enjoy higher household incomes than Britain. Spain and Portugal are not far behind, and, after a torrid few years, Italy is once more making strides. Poland, whose plumbers and electricians were blamed for dragging down wages in England in the run-up to Brexit, looks set to join the Richer-than-Blighty club in the next ten years, along with the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
If you don’t believe me – if you think I’m making it up – read the Daily Telegraph, which in recent months has begun to despair of Britain. The headline on a piece by one of its columnists this morning, read, “If you’re under 50, it’s time to jump ship – get out of Britain while you can”. Another, from last week, ran, “Britain isn’t in ‘managed’ decline. The country is about to fall off a cliff edge”. Alternatively, glance at the latest report by the Swiss bank UBS in which the UK is relegated to the second tier of global wealth, behind not only most of its European neighbours, but its one-time colonies, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Thirteen years have gone by since David Cameron blagged his way into Downing Street, to be followed by a succession of short-lived Tory prime ministers, each until Rishi Sunak, the too-little-too-late candidate, worse than the one before. Post-Cameron Britain has acquired the reputation of a nation in free fall. What sustains it in the main is a combination of past riches, what remains of its manufacturing heritage and the hard-pressed wheeler-dealers of the City of London.
It is easy to blame Brexit for everything that has gone wrong. In 2013, Britain boasted that it would overtake Germany as the EU’s richest economy by 2030. All that was holding it back, according to supporters of Vote Leave, was the fact that it was shackled to a corpse. How does that analysis stack up today? Not well. But the nation’s steepening decline since goes far deeper than its tortured relationship with the EU.
What seems to have happened is that, around the time of the millennium, the British lost confidence in themselves and no longer trust the traditional ruling class. Having ditched the superiority complex that came with empire, they have ended up simultaneously contemptuous of themselves and others. It is as if something vital inside their heads has been switched off. Once, Britain was the workshop of the world. Today, most landmark companies, along with the utilities that supplied them, have been sold off to foreign bidders. It began with the family silver; now it’s the wedding china. Every good idea, every start-up, comes with a sale price attached. “Stop me and buy one” could be the slogan of British business. Like Spain and Portugal in the seventeen-hundreds, Britain in the twenty-first century has come to accept that its best years, indeed its best centuries, are behind it. It is looking to retire, and its only concern is that its descent into genteel poverty, with a triple-locked pension, will not result in widespread social unrest.
When was the last time we did something truly impressive? The opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics? The Queen’s funeral? Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War were the last hurrahs of British determinism. The NHS is a disaster; our armed forces couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag; Parliament is a joke; young people, high on entitlement, no longer link success to hard work. The economy is weak and dysfunctional, as are the police and public bodies. Our universities – once among our proudest boasts – depend these days on overseas students, not the ill-educated and deluded home products, to keep the wolf from the door.
The only mystery is that would-be immigrants, from Africa and central Asia, still believe that London and the Home Counties offer rich pickings for new arrivals. Perhaps they do so in the well-founded belief that they will quickly rise to the top, trampling over the natives for whom ambition has become the hope that the state will look after them or that they will win the Lottery or triumph on Britain’s Got Talent or – if all else fails, which it probably will – that they will thrive as influencers on TikTok.
All this after 13 years, and counting, of Tory rule under a series of seemingly random prime ministers, none of whom could answer the only question that matters: What can be done to lift the UK out of the Slough of Despond?
We can surely agree on one thing: the Conservatives haven’t the foggiest notion. If they knew what needed to be done and how to do it, we wouldn’t be in our current predicament. We would be up there with the Belgians and the Irish. The Tories are not only incompetent, they are corrupt. Which is why the country has to take what remains of its courage in its hands and vote Keir Starmer and his Labour Party into power at the next election. Starmer may be a tad dull, and his top team are almost wholly untried. Maybe they will make things even worse. It could be, if I’m spared, that I will have to write another version of this piece ten years from now. But what have we got to lose? Maybe – just maybe – Labour will stop the rot. We’ve seen what the other lot achieved – sweet bugger-all. It’s time for a new beginning.
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